This is NYC, not rural NJ. This is what makes this so weird. While my neighbor's 18 month old and 3 year old daughters were happily splashing around in a little pool in the yard, a red tailed hawk landed on the porch railing not 10' from the little girls. My neighbor shot several pics with her cell phone. She would have called me over, knowing I'm an avid birder, but I had just left in my car on an errand. Scared that the raptor might hurt her kids, she grabbed them and took them inside. I guess Mr. Hawk...

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, posted a picture Sunday of what what he described as the “main body tool” for his company’s BFR interplanetary spaceship. BFR—which reportedly stands for “Big F---ing Rocket,” will be designed to withstand planetary entry on Earth, "Mars and beyond,” TechCrunch reported. Space.com reported that BFR's “chief aim” is to make colonizing Mars economically feasible. "We're actually building that ship right now," he said in an interview last month. "I think we'll probably be able to do short flights, short sort of up-and-down flights, probably sometime in the first half of next year." Shortly...

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk told an audience at South by Southwest that his timeline for sending a space vehicle to Mars could mark its first milestone early next year. The privately-funded venture, announced in September 2017, aims to send a cargo mission to the Red Planet by 2022. SpaceX's ultimate objective is to plant the seeds to put a human colony on Mars. Musk held a surprise question and answer session at the annual technology and culture festival in Austin, Texas on Sunday. The billionaire told attendees that "we are building the first Mars, or interplanetary ship, and...

Last night the world was close to a military confrontation between two nuclear powers, Russia and the U.S. In an incredibly dangerous incident in the skies over Syria, an American F-22, which is called a stealth fighter, fired what we now know to be warning flares at our attack aircraft Su-25 at close range.

Relativity Space, a Los Angeles orbital launch startup, has just released a short video showing its innovative Aeon 1 3D printed rocket engine in action. The impressive piece of equipment consists of just three 3D printed parts and is capable of reaching full thrust force in milliseconds. We’ve known for awhile that Relativity Space was working on some pretty cool stuff. This past October, for instance, the company announced the development of the Stargate 3D printer, which it says it the largest metal 3D printing system in the world. The machine, which consists of multiple laser-equipped Kuka robotic arms and...

Anyone see the Raptor making a few passes over northwestern (Flanders) NJ @ 3:35 today? Only thing going on in the area (16 miles south)is the LPGA Trump golf invo in Bedminster. Can't see a flyover taking place for that...LOL

With the F-22 Raptor, the Air Force acquired un equaled power to project air dominance. Lockheed Martin’s single-seat, twin-engined, all-weather fighter blended stealth, supercruise, great agility, and all-sensing avionics. Those features, plus high reliability and low maintenance, marked a huge leap in capability over USAF’s own F-15 Eagle, long the class of air combat. Indeed, the F-22 could not be matched by any known or projected fighter.

As if they suddenly came to an epiphany, the United States Air Force brass is now admitting what many of us have been screaming about for so long: We didn’t build nearly enough F-22s, and the F-35 cannot simply pick up the slack.

As if they suddenly came to an epiphany, the United States Air Force brass is now admitting what many of us have been screaming about for so long: We didn’t build nearly enough F-22s, and the F-35 cannot simply pick up the slack. So why aren’t those who pushed so hard to cancel the F-22 program being held accountable? By the mid 2000s, the F-22 was finally entering the fray as the world’s first true stealth fighter, offering a quantum leap in capability and performance when compared with anything else on the battlefield. It was a thoroughbred weapon system meant...

As if they suddenly came to an epiphany, the United States Air Force brass is now admitting what many of us have been screaming about for so long: We didn’t build nearly enough F-22s, and the F-35 cannot simply pick up the slack. So why aren’t those who pushed so hard to cancel the F-22 program being held accountable? By the mid 2000s, the F-22 was finally entering the fray as the world’s first true stealth fighter, offering a quantum leap in capability and performance when compared with anything else on the battlefield. It was a thoroughbred weapon system meant...

President Barack Obama dismissed the F-22 fighter jets used during Monday’s airstrikes against terrorist targets in Syria as “outdated and unnecessary” in a speech on July 21, 2009. “I reject the notion that we have to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on outdated and unnecessary defense projects to keep this nation secure” Obama said. "That's why I'm grateful that the Senate just voted against an additional $1.75 billion to buy F-22 fighter jets that military experts and members of both parties say we do not need.” ...more (w/video)...

Evidence released last year confirms that a French fighter pilot once Â“killedÂ” an American F-22 Raptor stealth fighter in mock combat. Although not unprecedented, the simulated shoot-down is still a big deal for a couple reasons. For one, the Lockheed Martin-made F-22 is supposed to be the most fearsome warplane in history, a quarter-billion-dollar-per-plane technological marvel that flies higher and faster than its opponents while avoiding detection by radar. The Pentagon is counting on a tiny number of the pricey Raptorsâ€ŠÂ—â€Šslightly more than 180â€ŠÂ—â€Što ward off potentially much larger numbers of enemy planes for the foreseeable future. Every mock dogfight...

Nearly six months after announcing that SpaceX would be testing Raptor engine components at NASA's Stennis Space Center, a ribbon cutting ceremony this past Monday officially unveiled the newly refurbished E-2 test stand. SpaceX has been working on the Raptor methane-fueled rocket engine since 2009. The new engine, a reusable engine is destined to be used in future versions of the Falcon Heavy and in the long term for the notional SpaceX Mars Colonial Transporter. Testing is set to begin within the coming days after the E-2 test stand activation is completed a spokesperson for SpaceX confirmed to SpaceRef. SpaceX...

Pratt & Whitney said Monday it is cooperating with authorities after federal agents arrested a former employee for trying to ship documents to Iran related to the U.S. military's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The East Hartford defense contractor, the sole manufacturer of the aircraft's engine, declined to comment on how Mozaffar Khazaee, 59, slipped thousands of pages of documents, diagrams, blueprints and technical manuals out the door before he was laid off in August along with hundreds of other employees. Federal authorities arrested Khazaee at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Thursday before he could board a plane...

Col. Kevin Robbins still remembers the first time he saw the F-22 Raptor. He was driving near the flightline of then Langley Air Force Base when he heard a load roar and saw a plane streak across his field of vision and start performing several aerial maneuvers. He stopped the car, got out and stared in amazement. An F-15 Eagle pilot himself, the colonel couldn't believe what he was seeing. "This plane was doing things that shouldn't be possible in a jet," he said. "I just kept thinking that if anyone tried that in any other plane, he'd be dead."...

This has been making it's rounds on the internet. While not completely historically accurate, looking at the comments, it seems even kids born in the 90's miss Reagan. There are enough touches to this picture that remind me of the 80's (see the DARE sticker?).

Romney wants to buy more F-22s By Michael Hoffman Monday, September 10th, 2012 5:54 pm Posted in Air, Election Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Saturday he would buy more F-22 Raptors as part of his plan to reverse many of the defense cuts planned by the Obama administration. Romney told a Virginia Beach, Va., television station he would not include the military in the spending cuts he is proposing to cut down the U.S. deficit. “Rather than completing nine ships per year, I’d move that up to 15. I’d also add F-22s to our Air Force fleet. And I’d...

The Pentagon announced Tuesday changes the Air Force will make to mitigate hypoxia-like symptoms experienced by some pilots flying F-22s, and a phased approach to lifting flight restrictions implemented earlier this year. To fix the air supply problem and reduce the incidents of hypoxia-like events, the Air Force has made two changes to the aircraft’s cockpit life support system, Defense Press Secretary George Little said. First, the Air Force will replace a valve in the upper pressure garment vest worn by pilots during high-altitude missions. The valve was causing the vest to inflate, and remain inflated under conditions where it...

Last week, the blog China Defense posted two photos, nearly identical, with only one line of text: “Just in case you might get confused, only one bird below is the J-20.” The J-20 stealth fighter is the creation of the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group for the People’s Liberation Army in China. About a year and a half ago, the People’s Liberation Army conducted its first tests of the aircraft, which is expected to be fully operational sometime between 2017 and 2019.

The Air Force late last month convened a summit in Ohio to address the most vexing problem of its premier jet fighter — pilots becoming dizzy from oxygen deprivation while flying the supersonic F-22 Raptor. Scientists, manufacturers and Raptor pilots at Wright-PattersonAir Force Base brainstormed on why aviators — 25 to date — are returning from missions suffering from hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation. “It was an update on where we were at,” said Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for the Air Force Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base. “We’re kind of closing in on some ideas.” The...